Saria's Awakening
by galanthusMist
Summary: This fic follows Saria as she is called by her main purpose for the game. Spoilers concerning Saria's story, if you haven't played Ocarina of Time through yet /Hinted Saria/Link paring/ COMPLETE
1. Ch1 Awakening

A 5-chapter piece of writing from my old fanfiction account, with only small changes (such as word order or word choice).

This story has spiritual description and a new style of writing that I was trying out. Notably short instalments. The plot follows Saria as she is alerted to how she is a Forest Sage, right up until meeting Link again~ Hints of Saria/Link paring, for three reasons: both people are contradictory (Saria is a child yet of an elderly person's wisdom, while Link is a young adult yet has a mind that is still that of a notably brave, but lacking-understanding-of-adult-life little boy), that they were friends first, and finally the quandary of never being anything more than friends as Saria shall never age. Anyway, my reasons to like that slight-paring aside... Let's begin.

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Introduction

Normally Saria's nightmares were of nonsense, such as screaming sounds, somehow-fanged purple plants or perhaps wolfos' wails chasing and biting her heels as she scurried away from their snapping jaws. However, one night's horror was scarily vivid, though surreal, and held her beloved wood as its stage.

She was seeking her own song as each note shivered the leaves of the trees that surrounded her in every step –when she slipped into spinning. Following her spirals, a blizzard of quivering branches rose from all angles and caught her in a cage of entanglement. The roughness tangled in the locks of her hair, which in that touch of brambles began to grow to gain stems to connect her green tresses to the tree twigs. The hair tendrils turned to leaves, her eyes suddenly shone as clear green with chlorophyll, and the smells of growth and verdant greenery swapped her Kokiri blood and body for sap and a hollow wood trunk.

The vibration feelings of her changes increased until the billow of wind about her wore away the wood enclosure, the sky and reality itself until there was only a world of ultimate whiteness. Alone, though not weakened for it, her song played on until shuddering ripples skimmed the surface of the white.

Then another song, one of soothing and royalty, raised to form a symphony with the sound of hers and soon a image, which had been faded to become part of the white world, shone with true vibrancy. The image was the depiction of a triangle formed by three others creating the corners. It held as hovering before and within Saria, as perfection and power... Purity, but then the picture melted into transparent droplets, as if crying in pain, which splashed like rain upon a floor that was uncovered by each puddle. The white Innocence was so easily able to be washed away.

Only then was it visible that she was back in the forest. Surrounding her, however, was _death_: darkness, outlines of grey singed trunks and the stench of black ash from the remaining smouldering of a fire, which apparently once ago decimated the tangible trees –and so tainted even Saria's memories of them. Her eyes watered with both the smell's potency... and with a profound inability to ever accept the agony with which the souls of the now non-place were still screaming.

A tear slipped off her cheek, only to catch in its fall and hover before her eyes. The tear reflected back to her how her once-navy irises had now turned to utter grey, just as had the forest. For a mouth to gape within the teardrop suddenly, containing ragged-tip teeth lacquered with drool. As that eyeless horror leapt towards her, so to envelop and dissolve all life that somehow remained lingering within—

Saria awoke unable to breathe, without the inclination to inhale. Aloe seemed to still be beating about her body rather than blood, and that spectre of Evil most pure and destructive was before her as an echo. The forest girl did not contemplate herself, however. She did not see the surroundings of her home, for the wood's still reverberating screams were the focus of her world. She knew she was needed.

Leaving the Kokiri behind, Saria slipped into the night and headed up to the ledges of the way to the Lost Woods... though she most definitely stalled and stared towards the houses of her friends. The Kokiri were all sleeping in depth and silence. She stared until it pained her eyes and insides.

Saria turned and continued to the source of 'the calling' once a blink broke her before the notion of leaving could do so. She left alone, for them.


	2. Ch2 Before the Woods

Before the Wood

At the last ledge before the Lost Woods, Saria slid up and through the leaves of the vine, with the foliage fluid in recovering after her touch passed upon them. Though she had sped over them, once she was up they seemed to have not been whatsoever disturbed. So was the deliberate lightness of her climb, supposedly.

The Kokiri girl continued on towards the entrance to the forest, but she noticed the leaves' reacting to her nonetheless: a whispering of the sensation of twigs snagging her hair, or maybe the air took upon a shade of freshness more upon leaving her lips than when she had inhaled the breath. Whatever alerted Saria to the vine's appreciation for her having been gentle in her grips, however, inverted into a screech of splitting trees and a roar of snapping roots for the life-form following Saria up the climbing entanglement.

Saria stood to stare over the edge –caught a glimpse of hair, the red of a lit deku stick, upon the top of a person just as corrosive and damaging to the leaf wall as said-fire. Tangling himself in the greenery was Mido!

"Saria!" His shrieks tore the night's veil of serene sleep-induced quiet, and distracted the forest girl's captivation on the woods just to her right. Just for a moment, though, until a 'tug' –like her skin hardening to bark-- towards Saria's path reminded her that she had been meaning to secretly slip away from the Kokiri others. She lost focus again however, when a pain came to her mind in connection to the ripping of a few leaves as Mido fell off the wall, landing onto the floor of freedom from his foliage captivity.

Despite the intense lurches of yearning for the Woods that were nearly overcoming Saria, a part in the back of her green-mist filled mind was sickened by the notion of leaving the Mido as fallen and alone. Saria had slipped back through the sheet of leaves, in the next snuffle from the boy in a crumple now before Saria's kneeling form.

"Mido. You're out of bed?" In answer came a scowl from under that tousled mesh of hair that was accented with a few now-dead, though still green, leaves. Mido was careful not to lift his head until he not-so-surreptitiously shifted his tears from his face to his wiping palms. When he did look up it was a bold eye-to-eye look, the haughtiness within his stare being the only kind of confidence able to be mustered by this boy of an eternal height of less than three feet. It was a familiar sight that had Saria find the strength to linger a little longer. ...However...

"The Lost Woods are dangerous. Much more so than before! You need protection, and I—" The sound of his voice was lost to Saria, as the green mist inside her intensified to grow as an encroaching verdant life. It was increasingly covering her sight, coming in from the sides to towards the centre, and was smothering all sound to muteness in her ears.

The lace web of foliage retreated and the wafting scent of forest grass dispersed and disappeared after the blink of alternate reality. The beating of her heart pounded blood through her and lessened a wave of panic mixed with pain that she had gained, oddly, only upon **re-entering** the usual world. Mido's panic was on his face as a shocked mask of wide eyes and an open mouth, the stereotypical surprised stare. The green must have also been visible _upon_ her, then.

The 'calling' took this time to return, but unable to leave Mido Saria spoke the words she knew would release his face from its frozen features, like spring shoots of childlike resilience through winter's ice. Saria was not and would never be totally sure if she told the truth in that sentence.

"I would much desire company on this trek, Mido."


	3. Ch3 Within the Woods

Within the Wood

The further she progressed with the paranoid Kokiri behind her, Saria's connection to the physical world was lessening, unravelling like roots pulled until taut and pressured to point of irrevocability. The world, including Mido and herself, glowed as if life-forms of chlorophyll. Scents turned heady and heavy, as if summer's fruits and flora had began to sweat cloying, sickening sweetness. The odour had her mouth dry as if malnourished and turned her throat so that, when she spoke to Mido, her voice was hoarse.

Slowing her stride to a stop in the place of water to her right and the next full-circle circumference archway towards the place that was calling her, Saria sought the words meant for a being that belonged outside the Woods rather than within. Which land was she to have future experiences within, Saria wondered.

"You don't need to know the way back to wind up at your home. Just make your way into the mystery." she said to Mido. Her movements stuttering with her inner struggles to not 'blink' away from the uncomprehending boy behind her, Saria turned her head to talk over her shoulder to him. To find that she didn't see Mido as an organism separate from the foliage behind him anymore; all the world was one existing system with many difference externals, after all, but Saria still battled the rushing of leaves rustling so to hear Mido's protesting reply.

"We'll both go home, Saria. I... I order it to happen! And as it is I, the great and—"

"--Ever so brave and boisterously bold Mido." Saria saw the leaves of Mido's face area turn to autumn red as he blushed to hear her additions, though he had turned his back to her to hide it. She knew Mido would not leave, yet still she did not know if she regretted having asked him to have come.

Saria reached her hand towards the place Mido was supposedly standing in, except she saw a face formed not by leaves, but memories. Not the face of Mido... but rather of the lost boy of Hylian blood and Kokiri clothes. The face had words within her emit from her lips without her steadily declining conscious will, before her final strand connection to her life as simply Saria the Kokiri snapped to unleash her all once latent lavishness.

"Mido... Would you maybe give a message for me?"

Saria described her last request and then was passing through the last passages towards the temple, her heart consumed by 'the calling'. The shouts of Mido behind her, or the warble of whisperings speaking of all that Saria would become; to these she was deaf as her physical form faded to naught, into a familiar, yet never before experienced whiteness.


	4. Ch4 Within the White

Within the White

Wordless. Whatever were words? Suspended without restrictions. Or was she moving, or was maybe the world? What was a world with no life, and what was a world with air for living beings to breathe?: Questions Saria was not wondering upon one 'plane' of reality, through was throbbing with –agonizing over—in another. All planes were plants rising to perfect robustness as the garden growing to shape the spiritual green of Saria's stare. _**Sight**_.

Even with the new emergence of eyes, the pictures surrounding her flickered as fast, indiscernible and far from describing perfection: flames and fighting were corroding the world, whatever a world was. The world, the only one planet upon which all life lines were woven with omnipotence... where any being had power, whether lost, latent or otherwise... was being mutilated and banished into oblivion.

With the warring came whispering and wailing, and so from sources of woe came to Saria _**sound**_. Now able to add noises to the images, Saria's imagination slowed their flickering, or perhaps accelerated her sight. Regardless of which, the multiple fires were now visible as not so dangerous and also differently coloured: four statue-base torches flickering in a square's corners in blue, violet, emerald and classic crimson.

The room in which the square was contained was immense in expanse. Brown and grey stone, coarse and chill as if forever in moonlight's touch, the webs slung about were heavy with filth gathered over years or moments or eternities, climbing vines of shadow green gathered as thick and strong enough to perpetually cling to the rough stone, and walls were screeching echoes of enemies' thirsts for weakened targets.

A particular morsel, for which mutated plants' mouths slobbered, was in a picture's frame only fleetingly, thus was forgotten totally in no measurement of time. Only, then tell-tale features showed up in increasing frequency:

Gloves of toughened red cracked just slightly as the fingers tensed their clutch upon a sword. That said-weapon radiated the steady power of mountains, twinned with twice the readiness for violence of a volcano's quake. A shield, holding the crest of the race and lineage which coloured the blood of the weapon's wielder, was held firm by a right arm.

Sparks skated the shield's blue and silver surface under a blow from the chisel-chime strike of a spider skull, and behind those shines there was a small show of the man's blonde hair. Those yellow fringe strands ran in sheen from under the rim of a verdant cap that matched the rest of his garb. Clad like a Kokiri was that man –that man, who was bane to the Evil that has poisoned her dreams.

She now had a _**voice**_. Her first word was to speak that man's name.

If to talk a name is to taste the nuances of the entity whom is so called... then upon speaking, the pallet of Saria burst into fountains flowing rivers of multiple colours merging. The potency of the 'taste' was for the totality of his power potential. For his personality, however, a blizzard of pinked petals blended to create unity and formed Saria's flesh. A physical form designed from delicateness, and delivered by her –and Time's—_hero_.

...Bittersweet. All that was her friend of childhood-forged memories, had the taste of tear-inducing bittersweet: It was together tantalising and terrorising to think of him, and both always at once. And she was aware, totally, of why. Saria let her eyelids slip shut until all existence shone white.


	5. Ch5 The End, New Beginnings

The End, New Beginnings

A cascade of cerulean ripples acted as coat and lighting for the reaches of the 'room'. Also the pedestals placed around a centre platform were coloured the same. The chamber seemed covered in underwater undulations, although the atmosphere was not as palpable as a sea's pressure.

Crystalline clinking accented the Hero's decline of hovering within a house of shiny, enclosed facets. The sides slipped out of the world itself and as soles of work-weathered shoes impacted the platform, Saria stepped forward onto that place of reality to face him. The Hero of Time, her awakener, turned to hear her talk.

How the Master Sword has chosen him, the contradiction of the child him staring out through a slightly scowling face from a man's physical form, a murmur of memories flowing to under-light how perplexing was this present, and his potential still latent yet ultimately to be unleashed... Saria saw all shades and overt blocks of brightness and shadow and blackness both simultaneously and in sequence.

She sighted even more, with how every speck of shine of existence was shimmering, for her eyes, with the life of the Woods: everything was of interlinked ecosystems shaped by vine tendrils, which were utterly unwavering in strength of invigoration of growth, tying together each and every contributing counterpart.

Saria's senses had her shiver with the exhilaration of nature in its completeness, yet she was cleansed of any chance of an awe-struck, overwhelmed state by clarity of cerebral and spiritual awareness. She had the gift to see and feel all details in definition of lives' most faultless forms, while also awesomely aware of every entity's relation to the rustling of arboreal greenery and leaves and scents.

If spirits are of constant growth, then Saria saw all stages from seed to sapling to strength of age and empowerment in every glimpse she took of a being at only one time in that soul's life.

Saria smiled and her omnipotence shone from her body of Kokiri and spirit and SAGE all together, synthesized, for all time. When she spoke, her voice was as if echoed by potency that could smother or soothe, that was of subtleness and incredible intricacy all at once. When she breathed, she sensed the shivering of leaves and the absorption by roots as if the Woods were breathing with her.

"You did it. You saved my Temple, my strength... You are here, and you saved me." Saria spoke, as she forever would, as BOTH Sage and girl. The latter sent the stabs of passion into her heart to share through her words, and the former granted the Forest's gratitude in its immensity. Saria blinked slowly, and then stared --so simply she did so-- to the man, the boy, the being of bravery before her.

"And because of you, I have emerged, awakened, as Sage of the Forest! ...I lend to you my medallion." Her newfound natural strength would never fail or falter. But her emotions leapt as a leaf torn from a tree as, to her Hero, she sent the symbol of her—

"Saria." The Hero of Time spoke her name, and –just as she had 'tasted' him—experienced all intensity of Saria's intrinsic extremeness. His reaction was tangible in how he stumbled just slightly, in how he had with subtlety savoured speaking that one word, as if he had been silent forever until that moment... and in how he scowled his common trait of lack of comprehension of depth.

Saria giggled, with all memories of past happiness showing up for that... that last laugh with her Hero.

For he had been her boy of courage when they were both Kokiri. Now him a Hylian Hero, and her a Sage... a Sage of gifts and the glory of carrying the youth of rebirth and ecosystem life cycles for eternity. She told herself there was no room for regretting times taken from her and him.

His scowl washed from his face suddenly into surprise as the Sending crystal re-simulated as surrounding him. He had flicked his gaze around, but now he accustomed cerulean irises –which wavered with _supposedly_ the wall's 'sea waves'— to upon Saria. He smacked his palms to the facet in front of him, between him and—

"I'll listen for the song." Saria spoke, before shielding herself from his look by shutting her eyelids.

The light then erupted to enclose and send off all surrounding beings to their places of belonging. Within the whiteness, the two warriors were separated, and upon all planes able to be sighted by Saria there was suddenly rain.

The forest girl, Saria the Sage, subtle and strong, growing and green eternally ever after... That Kokiri girl whispered into the whiteness. Perhaps her one intended listener would, just this once, _truly_ hear her. Saria would still never be sure if she truly wanted him to understand.

"Remember. I will always be... your friend..."


End file.
